Day 270: The Art of Fugue

So for a few weeks now I have been working with a free music notation software called Musescore. Initially, I started using it because some of my students are into it. I am teaching myself how it works so I can better help them. Today I was suddenly inspired, and the next thing you knew, I had started working on a new piece, using Musescore.

Well, actually, I started writing a fugue. I say that with some trepidation. Saying “I started writing a fugue” is a little like saying, “I started writing a symphony.” Many have tried, many more have failed.

Okay, maybe I’m not that burdened by it. But writing a fugue is no laughing matter. Writing a fugue is somewhere between playing an advanced game of chess and creating structural designs for a new building. Strategizing, coordination, and balance are all required, in addition to the usual qualities of creativity and expression.

Fugue is an art form that I have studied throughout my life: first in high school, when I played some of J.S. Bach’s Prelude and Fugues, and then in college, when I took both modal and tonal counterpoint, two music theory classes that help you build the skills needed to write a fugue.

Fugue is considered one of the more challenging musical art forms, and, by some, as the “highest.” I don’t know if I would go that far. I believe the value of music is more about the individual meaning it has for people. Many people respect fugues (as well as classical music generally, for that matter), but in many cases, I think it is probably a detached, academic respect, rather than the type of fall-over-balling- your-eyes-out-because-you-are-so-moved sort of respect.

I suppose my respect for the fugue is somewhere in the middle. I have been touched in my soul by the art of fugue a time or two as a piano student. I certainly have spent far more time than the average person on the subject–probably more than the average musician, unless you are a full-time Baroque and/or Bach specialist.

And so I today found myself toying with a fugal subject today. We speak of “subjects” when talking about fugue because there is a primary melody that is the subject of the fugue. I was messing around on Musescore, and suddenly the idea hit me: what I saw in front of me wasn’t just some random notes. It was a “subject.” And so this fugue idea was born.

That’s usually how ideas come. They are suddenly there, like that metaphorical light bulb, it just goes off in my head. “Aha!” I spent several hours today working it out. So far I have twenty-six measures done. I am really not sure how long it will be.

It feels good to be touched, once again, by the muse of creative inspiration.